Founded in 1952, Physical Chemistry is one of the first national key disciplines authorized to award doctoral degrees, and one of the first national key disciplines set up in 1988, and the key construction disciplines of the “211 Project” (1995). It has the first groups of national doctoral degree authorization (1981) and post-doctoral research center (1995). Physical Chemistry relies on the construction of the Institute of Theoretical Chemistry, Department of Physical Chemistry, and Institute of Physical Chemistry. Among them, the Institute of Theoretical Chemistry was founded in 1978 (approved by the State Science and Technology Commission), the Department of Physical Chemistry and the Institute of Physical Chemistry were established in 2001.
Physical Chemistry has formed a reasonable talent ecosystem of teaching and research. With the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education and Jilin University, a high-performance platform for theoretical chemistry has been built. The platform construction has been close to the level of similar international research institutions, which provides good conditions for the laboratory’s research, talent cultivation, and global exchange and collaboration.
In recent years, the discipline has undertaken a number of national and provincial science and technology projects, including the National Natural Science Key Foundation, the National Major Basic Research Project “973” sub-project, the Ministry of Science and Technology “863” and so on; A total of more than 900 scientific and technological papers were published by SCI; Several patents for invention have been authorized; Awarded 2 provincial scientific and technological progress awards; Designed and developed the theoretical chemical calculation software with independent intellectual property rights; Significant progress has been made in the fields of environmental electrochemical sewage treatment technology, comprehensive utilization of biomass conversion, air pollution control technology, air purification equipment, nanocrystalline immune test paper detection technology and other application technologies, and some achievements have been successfully industrialized. In addition, the discipline has founded close cooperation and exchange relations with Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kaiserslautern University of Germany, Dalhaus University of Canada, and other scientific research institutions at home and abroad, and has jointly trained many Ph.D. students. Over the past five years, it has cultivated more than 470 master and doctoral degree students and a large number of outstanding talents in physical chemistry.
At present, the main research fields of physical chemistry include excited-state methods and optoelectronic material design, chemical microscopic process and reaction control law, structure and performance and molecular design from clusters to nano-systems, multi-scale structure and dynamics simulation of polymers, computer simulation of complex biological systems, photochemistry and photophysics, nano-biomedical materials, environmentally friendly catalytic technology, comprehensive utilization of biomass conversion, and magnetic materials and electrochemical engineering.
The main research characteristics of physical chemistry are as follows: facing the national strategic needs and the frontier topics of physical chemistry, based on theoretical calculation chemistry, guided by functions, gradually set up a basic theoretical and methodological system with its own characteristics, and intersected, infiltrated and integrated with materials science, environmental science, life science, energy chemistry, and photoelectric chemistry. We will strive to solve the important basic scientific problems and applied technical problems faced by the development of physical chemistry. The research direction involves from the establishment of theoretical chemistry research methods to program design, from weak interaction to strong interaction in chemistry, from micro-molecular reaction kinetics to macro-catalytic reaction technology, from the preparation of nano-biomedical materials to the promotion of clinical detection technology, from the research of photoelectric properties of functional materials to the design and development of instruments. A series of important issues, such as basic research of electrochemistry and research and development of industrial application technology, fully reflect the characteristics of the direction of physical chemistry research. It is characterized by the intersection and integration of chemistry, mathematics, physics, material science, life science, computer science, and other disciplines.
